THE SECOND wave of coronavirus has hit the UK with devastating consequences, and the Tory government’s efforts at bringing in measures to curb the spread are like a modern-day King Canute attempting to command the waves to retreat.
The Tory government are responsible for creating conditions in which the virus has spread like wildfire again. They re-opened the schools, the nurseries, the universities, they drove people back to work for the sake of profit, and damn the consequences.
42,592 have now died of the virus, 562,000 have been infected. There has been a 98% increase in death in the last few days and a 192% increase in infection. Rather than use a rigorous and scientific method to eradicate the virus the Tory Johnson government has chosen to attempt to save British capitalism rather than saving the British public’s lives.
And their attempts at saving British capitalism are futile. British capitalism was bankrupt before the coronavirus. The pandemic has just increased the rapidly accelerated decline with the closure of what little industry Britain had left.
The final flight of the last two 747 jets departed on Thursday with British Airways retiring its entire fleet of 31 Boeing 747s four years ahead of schedule.
Car sales slumped 4.4% in September; Jaguar Land Rover put its workers on a three-day week; Ford in Bridgend in Wales shut its factory after 40 years, with the loss of over a thousand jobs.
Retail and restaurants have been hit for six with Debenhams, DW Sports, Marks & Spencer, Pret a Manger, currency exchange company Travelex, and WH Smith all announcing shop closures and mass sackings.
A tiered system of measures for England is set to be announced by Monday, with a traffic light scheme where, if your town is deemed ‘Red’, all pubs, bars and restaurants will be shut down. Small family businesses, restaurants and cafes will be left to go to the wall, to shut and never re-open again.
Most universities around the country are now teaching completely on-line after tens of thousands of students were infected. Students were forcibly locked down in their halls in Glasgow and Manchester, with security guards patrolling, stopping them from leaving campus, an act ruled as ‘unlawful’.
The NHS Nightingale temporary hospitals around the country have been reactivated amid the surge of cases in the UK.
Meanwhile, China showed off its newly reopened sports centre in Wuhan which was used as a hospital during the first days of the coronavirus pandemic. China has declared the coronavirus has been totally eradicated. And this is while the capitalist world is suffering a global death toll which now stands at more than one million and growing.
China celebrated the newly reopened arena at the Wuhan Sports Centre as 7,500 people crowded inside to watch a basketball game. It was turned into the Fang Cang temporary hospital in February and received 1,065 patients.
Wuhan was the epicentre of the pandemic. Wuhan has been out of lockdown since April 8 – and has recorded no new cases of community transmission since May. The city is back to the ‘old normal’ with pictures last month also showing packed nightclubs and a crammed pool party.
The Chinese deformed workers’ state was able to shut down, with no loss of wages to workers, and to conduct a massive campaign to defeat the virus. They definitely did not learn to live with it!
This is the only way to eradicate the virus. Lock the country down, have trained people in hazmat suits to deliver food and essentials to people’s doors. Go door to door, testing and tracing. All those found to be positive for the virus and all those who they had been in contact with removed from their homes and taken to hospital to recover.
This scientific method, to systematically go through all neighbourhoods in every town, village and city in the country, is the only way to eradicate a virus. And it is something that was successfully achieved in both Vietnam and China.
Capitalist countries are not prepared to do this. The capitalist leaders are not directed by the needs of the people, but by the needs of the bosses to continue to make profits.
The only way forward is to bring this Tory government down, through mass strike action, to establish a workers government, that will immediately nationalise all services, industries, banks and land and put the massive resources of this country into the hands of the majority. Such a government will implement measures to eradicate the virus in a matter of weeks.
